What is F-TRAC?

F-TRAC is where India's short-term debt market files its paperwork. If a company issues commercial paper, if a bank issues a certificate of deposit, if either trades over the counter, if an issuer buys paper back or defaults on it, the record goes to F-TRAC, the Financial Market Trade Reporting and Confirmation Platform run by the Clearing Corporation of India. Two RBI Master Directions put those obligations there: the Certificate of Deposit Directions, 2021 and the Commercial Paper and NCD Directions, 2024. This guide explains what F-TRAC is, what lands on it and when. It is not investment advice.

Why does a trade repository exist for money market instruments?

Because these instruments mostly do not pass through an exchange. Commercial paper and certificates of deposit trade over the counter, including on electronic trading platforms, and only sometimes on a recognised stock exchange with RBI approval. Over-the-counter markets are defined in the 2024 Directions as markets where transactions are undertaken in any manner other than on recognised stock exchanges. Without a central reporting point, a bilateral trade between two institutions would leave no public trace at all.

So the RBI separated two things that an exchange normally does at once: where a trade happens and where a trade is recorded. The trade can happen anywhere permitted. The record has to reach the repository, on a clock.

What gets reported to F-TRAC, and by when?

Four event types, three reporting parties, two deadlines. The obligations are near identical across the commercial paper Directions of 2024 and the certificate of deposit Directions of 2021.

Two details in that table are easy to misread.

The reporting party changes with the instrument. For a certificate of deposit, the issuing bank reports its own issuance. For commercial paper and short-term NCDs, a third party, the issuing and paying agent, reports it. Same repository, same deadline, different entity on the hook.

The trade report is bilateral, not single-sided. Both counterparties report, each with a time stamp, within 15 minutes of the time the price was agreed. That is what makes the repository a confirmation platform and not just a log.

What does not go to F-TRAC

Three parallel streams run to the RBI directly rather than to the repository, and confusing them with F-TRAC data is a common error.

• Depository holdings. Depositories report the details of commercial paper, short-term NCDs and certificates of deposit held with them in dematerialised form to the RBI, in a prescribed format, at fortnightly intervals, on the 15th day and on the last day of the month.
• Debenture trustee reporting. For short-term NCDs, the debenture trustee reports outstanding amounts and particulars of default to the RBI quarterly, within 15 days from the end of the quarter, by email.
• Issuer disclosure of default. Separately from the F-TRAC report, the issuer must publicly disseminate a default, for example on its own website.

Listing adds a fourth stream. Where commercial paper is listed, disclosures go to the stock exchange under Chapter XVII of SEBI's Master Circular for issue and listing of non-convertible securities, securitised debt instruments, security receipts, municipal debt securities and commercial paper, dated 15 October 2025. That is an exchange filing, not a repository report.

How to think about F-TRAC data

The repository is a reporting venue, and its outputs are governed by the same Directions. Paragraph 8 of the certificate of deposit Directions provides that the Reserve Bank, or a person authorised by it, may publish anonymised data relating to primary and secondary market transactions in CDs. Read that carefully: the granular record is a supervisory dataset, and what reaches the public is what the RBI chooses to publish, in anonymised form.

That is a different disclosure posture from the equity side of the Indian market, where a shareholding pattern under SEBI LODR or an insider trade under the PIT Regulations is disseminated by name, on an exchange, for anyone to read. If you are used to insider trading disclosures or shareholding patterns, the short-term debt market will look opaque by comparison, and the reason is structural rather than accidental.

For the instruments themselves, see what is commercial paper, what is a certificate of deposit, and the naming trap between short-term and long-term debentures in commercial paper vs NCD.

F-TRAC is the answer to a question most investors never think to ask: when an instrument never touches an exchange, who writes down that it existed. Flock reports public regulatory filings with every claim sourced and dated. What any of it means for your money is your call to make.